What if?
by beowulf22558
Summary: What if instead of a nice Jack the evil Jack was victorious? And the only person who could keep him sane, a new girl from Texas named Haylee. this is my first ever fanfiction so please no cruel comments. Rated T just in case. HayleexOC
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

How would you feel if one day you realized that your existence was the only thing that kept one person sane and alive?

Chapter 1

It had been many years since my friend, Clay, left to go to a secret place with no more than a goodbye. You see, I moved to Texas from Ireland when I was 6 years old. Needing work badly my dad found a farm to help on. The man seemed nice enough, but what made me happy was that he had a 6 year old son for me to play with. Day after day we would help our parents, and day after day we talked. Each day the accent I was raised with began to fade and he ran out of things to insult me with. Eventually we became best friends. We grew older and one day he said bye and left. As I called after him, yelling at him to write, my accent showed more than it had in years, and he looked at me and smiled.

Of course I continued to work on the farm, and one day I realized I could outwork my dad. As the days went by I continued to write to Clay, telling him we were all fine; then every once in a while he'd write back. He always said that he couldn't tell me what he was doing. "I can't tell y'all everythin' that's goin' on, but I can say that you would love it, were ya here. 'Speacially you sis". Sis, that's what he would call me. He had a real sister, but she left a while ago. I guess I would like it, whatever "it" was. He always knew what I liked.

My overactive imagination was to blame I guess. Constantly I would imagine my best friend, much taller and larger than myself. He had shaggy, messy, blonde hair. I always thought of him and his friends out taming dragons, of fighting wizards. Clay knew about this habit of mine and would constantly play off of it. But ever since he left I've had a awful time telling my fantasy from my reality.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Why is she just standing there? Why won't she move? Why won't she blink?" I stood there facing the darkness. Only one obstacle in my way: a young teenager, about 16 years of age. She had long, dirty blonde hair sitting on her shoulders in two braids. Her eyes were large, pale amber-green, and staring intently at me. She wore a red t-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. A habit, no doubt, picked up from a friend. As I stared at her freckled face I realized just who I was looking at. It was me. Why I hadn't seen it sooner, I don't know. I backed up, so did she. Suddenly her head turned, she looked at me, frightened, and pointed. I couldn't help but look.

In the distance I saw Clay. He was fighting alongside a boy with no hair, a boy who must have been from South America somewhere, and a girl, no doubt, from Japan. All of them appeared to be the same age, saving the small bald boy. And they all seemed to be using a special kind of martial arts style I'd never seen before. They moved things without touching them, only by briskly swinging at them.

It was then that I noticed who they were attacking. It was a boy, looking to be the same age as us all. He had flaming red hair, and was wearing a long, black coat. He used the same fighting style as Clay and the others. No, it's not a style; they're using items to control other items. I'd never seen a sword do that, or a staff do that. They continued to fight, I continued to watch; all the time slowly moving closer.

In about a minute mister Red Hair went to attack Clay, and whether from fear or bravery I jumped in. "They don't see me" I thought. And for the first time, I was scared. Not because my friend was in danger, not because his friends were in danger, not even because I was in danger. No.

I woke up. My forehead was covered in a thin layer of sweat as I rolled in my bed. I looked at my desk, 3 o'clock. My thoughts roamed back to my dream. How were they doing what they did? Why were they there? But, most of all what was it that scared me so much as to wake me up. I looked back at my desk, 3:15 Too early to get up, too late to go back to sleep.

I decided to get up. I wrapped myself in my blanket and went to the bookshelf. I picked out my favorite book; one about a dragon rider. All of my favorite ideas: fate, destiny, fantasy, and, most of all, magic.

As I read I couldn't help but think of my dream. I held my breath and my heart skipped a beat as I ran through the dream over and over; focusing intently on the part that woke me up. What was it?


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Finally, as can be predicted, the day continued. I woke to the darkness after a troubled, but dreamless, sleep. I had fallen asleep with my book lying over my face. As I removed it, to my amazement, the afternoon sun streamed through my bedroom window and into my face. As I looked I guessed it had to be about 2 o'clock. I felt stiff as I stood from the overstuffed chair in which I was sitting. My blanket had fallen off and to the floor at some point during the night. As I bent to retrieve it I finally realized that I should look at a clock.

I tossed the blanket onto my bed and for once in my life, didn't see anything wrong with not making my bed. As I walked to my bookshelf to place the book back into its place I glanced at my digital clock. Its red numbers were almost invisible in the bright light but I managed to make out the time as being 1:47. How could I have possibly have slept in that late though. I got dressed in a daze as my mind swam with thoughts.

I left my room and, as I waited for my toast to finish, pondered my dream even more from the night before. Without much thought my toast was buttered then eaten as I walked out to get started on my, late, chores.

"Hey there, Ladybug." It was the usual greeting from my father. He said it with his strong Irish accent that I had been raised with and had become, oh so, accustomed to. "Yeh slept in late today. Are yeh feeling okay?" The question caught me off guard. Physically I felt fine but mentally, I wasn't all there. Instead of answering his question I just kind of stared at him until my mind stayed put on one thing. I chose my words carefully when I finally answered.

"I'm not sick, dad." I surprised myself with how hollow my voice sounded, so I forced my face into a pretty convincing half-smile and went to work. The entire day I pondered what I could have seen in my dream that woke me up. I couldn't remember what it was, as hard as I tried. I didn't think about much other than that all day. That is until I was helping my dad bring the cows 'round. As I rode next to my dad I remembered that the Clay I saw in my dream looked different from the Clay I remembered. He looked older. Is it possible for your brain to imagine how people would age, even if you haven't seen them recently? It was another one of those thoughts I couldn't shake no matter how hard I tried. He was much older than the last time I saw him, it was the way he must look if I was to see him now. What makes it stranger was every other time I had thought about Clay I never pictured him looking the way he did in the dream. Plus I always dreamt about him looking the way he did when he left. For some reason it just didn't feel right.

Once I thought of this a lot of other things started to seem strange. For instance I've never seen the other people in the dream before, but they were very clear and not one detail of them changed, which would have happened if I had just made them up. Thought after thought rushed into my head, all of them questions that I just couldn't seem to answer.

"Hey, are you not listening to me?" my father's voice broke through my stupor and judging by the look on his face, he'd been trying for a while to do just that.

"Huh?" I mumbled, hardly even paying attention to what he was he was saying. I guess I looked kind of pathetic and lost because I heard my dad give a deep laugh and shake his head. "I'm sorry daddy, I was just thinking" I told him while smiling and trying to catch up. "Slow down, would ya" I shouted after him. I could tell what he was doing, the same thing he always did when I thought too much.

"Race you too the stables!" He shouted over his shoulder. This confirmed my suspicions and I picked up speed. We laughed all the way and I had to admit he was a whole lot faster than me when he had a horse. As we approached the building he must have slowed down because I managed to catch up. When we finished the race we had declared it a draw, and decided that our prize would be a couple of glasses of ice tea. We sat on the porch and drank our tea and for a moment everything seemed right. For the first time that day I had a genuine smile on my face and I felt it was there to stay.

We drank our tea until all that was left was the ice at the bottom of the glass. As we returned to work we decided to have another competition. Whoever picked the most weeds won, and we were determined not to have another tie. So we got to work. For well over two hours we weeded the farmland pulling even the smallest ones so we would win. A few times I even caught my dad stealing from my pile and adding it to his own. By the end of the whole ordeal it was less of who could pull the most weeds and more of who could carry the most and run with them.

Tired and beat, we sat down on the ground and looked at the sky. Time had passed and the sun was beginning to set. As we watched, the air became chillier with each star that showed itself. Finally it was completely dark and we headed back to our house, deciding that there was no winner to our little competition. As we walked inside I went to the dining room and made the table as my dad went to make dinner. As I sat down at my spot at the tiny round table my dad walked out with two bowls. He set one in front of me then sat down at his spot with his bowl. Tonight dad made stew for us, which was nice cause it's just the thing for a girl who thinks too much then has competitions to help with it. The stew tasted amazing, however it's warmth brought back the chills I had had that morning. Suddenly everything that my dad had tried so hard to make me stop thinking about came back to me. I guess my dad saw my face sink because all of a sudden he cleared his throat, loudly, and started to talk. "Oh, you got another letter from Clay." He began. "It came this morning while you were sleeping. I was going to give it to you earlier but there was a lot to get done." With that he threw the envelope across the small gap between us. It was off white and had a very familiar design on the flap. I had seen the design multiple times before, each on every single one of Clay's letters. I almost opened it, but stopped short. I had too much on my mind to read Clay's letters. Instead I put it on my bedside table to read later and walked outside.

As I walked across the large yard I saw a tree. It was huge and its branches reached for the sky. It wasn't the first time I'd seen the tree but it was the first time that I decided I would talk to it. It was old so it had to know things, and since nobody else could help me I needed someone, or something, that might know what I should do. I approached it and, I know that I was being crazy; I heard it whispering. I walked up to the tree and sat at the base of its trunk. While looking up at the leaves above I started talk, mostly to myself, but then I started to talk to the tree. I talked about everything: the dream, Clay, his friends, and even the fire haired boy. After I explained to the tree that I just didn't know what to do, I felt the wind die down and had the strangest feeling that the tree not only heard me, but understood me. Under the tree I felt comfortable and at some point I must have fallen asleep and for a while I forgot all about my worries and my dreams were deep and magical.

I woke in a daze and for a long moment had forgotten where I was. As soon as my mind had caught up with reality I remembered that I was under my tree. That was it, "I'm going to claim this tree" and with that I put my hand on its trunk and announced it. "You're going to be the first one I go to from now on until Clay gets back." I guess the tree agreed with me, because, as if saying a vow of its own, the tree's leaves rustled and a few branches touched my hand. With a new feeling of a different kind of friendship I looked at the sky. The moon was still up so I decided to go into my house and get some sleep in my bed before my dad wondered where I was in the morning. As I turned to leave towards my house I stopped and did something that I can't even rationalize. I turned around and without thinking I ran back and hugged the tree. No longer surprised by anything about this tree, I noticed that it hugged me back.

I lied in bed for what seemed like hours, waiting for sleep to take me. Eventually it did and I regretted it immediately. I was back in the darkness with the same teenager staring at me and in the pit of my stomach I knew what was coming. I looked over and a new scene was playing out in front of me. I couldn't hear anything just muffled voices, even though they were standing not twenty feet from me. I saw Clay, again, and he was with his friends. I noticed they were listening to the fire haired boy talk. Their faces actually looked kind of worried. As the boy walked around I saw him point at Clay a lot. Luckily, being around Clay, I had learned to read lips fairly well (we say a lot of things behind our parents' backs). This came in handy now and I realized that he said "Starting with yours" the last time he pointed at Clay. I decided to take a seat and see what would happen, but I gave up on reading lips. I knew I didn't want to do that anymore. I noticed that the boy with the red hair would walk around Clay and his friends, pointing at them all in turn. As he did this he had a way about him that made him seem really confident and it annoyed me.

Finally the red haired boy left. Clay and his friends began to talk to each other. So I decided now would be a good time to start reading lips again.

"What should we do" it was the small bald boy. "We should just take him on again, train a bit and then he wouldn't even stand a chance," the South American boy this time. I imagine that the Japanese girl said something but I can't be sure, she had her back to me. Whatever she said though, it brought the mood of the South American boy down quite a bit. "I've got to go home, now." There was no reason to read Clay's lips; this was the only thing in the entire dream that seemed to have any actual sound. It was also the thing that woke me up.

I sat in bed thinking about this dream that I just had. I was calculating how many days would it take for Clay to get here. No more than two, that's how long it took him to write to me when he first left. That letter said he just arrived so it had only taken him two days to get down there. Unlike my last dream, this one had me excited. I jumped out of bed, only glancing at the clock, 5:30. I grabbed the envelope to read the letter. Suddenly I stopped. There was reason Clay was coming back, and it wasn't a good one I was sure. It must have had to do with whatever it was that the red haired boy said to him. "Starting with yours"? What the hell does that mean? Whatever it was it must have been personal. Especially if Clay says that he's coming home.

"Wait a minute Haylee. It was just a dream; don't think too much about it." Who was I kidding even I knew that two dreams in a row like that was more than a coincidence. As clear as they were they had to be more than dreams, right? I knew what I would do. I was going to go ask my tree about it. After all, I had said I would go to the tree first, even if it did seem a little crazy. So it was decided, I got dressed quickly and walked out to the living room where my dad was sitting, eating breakfast. He even had a plate for me ready.

"Where you off to in such a hurry, Ladybug?" He asked with a smile as I gladly took my plate from him.

"Going to talk to my tree" I said confidently. I didn't care how crazy I sounded, he was my dad after all. However, instead of looking confused or judgmental, he simply smiled wider and his eyes lit up like he was incredibly proud of me.

"Well go and have fun, okay" He said with that giant smile still on his face and showing me all his teeth. As I finished my food I stood to leave, gave him a hug and turned towards the door, leaving my plate on the table. When I got to the door I heard my dad call my name and I turned to face him again. "Tell her I say 'Hi'" was all he said before collecting the dishes and heading towards the kitchen. All I could do was stand in the doorway, half in and half out, incredibly confused.


End file.
